NOTE: THE DEFINING
GENERATION is a project begun by Doug and Pam Sterner in 2002 and
completed in 2006. Initially is was prepared for publication as a book,
however with their changing focus to development of a database of military
awards, was postponed indefinitely so they could concentrate on that
larger, more important work. The stories found herein however, need to be
shared, and they have consented to make this compilation available in this
format. While each story can stand alone, it is recommended that for
continuity, readers will be best served by reading the chapters
sequentially from first to last.

The Defining
Generation

-

Defining the Future
of Politics

Condoleezza Rice

"It is often said that
diversity is one of our nation's greatest strengths, but too
rarely do we take the time to think what that means. I believe the
answer is very simple. America and Americans are willing to
embrace all that is good in the world…while maintaining the
basic principles of American liberty, as enshrined in our
Constitution and Bill of Rights."

Secretary Condoleezza Rice

In
1963 while Hillary Rodham was campaigning for Barry Goldwater, 600 miles
and a world away another young lady seven years her junior was growing up
very much like Hillary in
Birmingham
,
Alabama
. A study of their young lives reveals they had much in common: both came
from middle-class families with modest but stable livelihoods, both had
loving parents who encouraged them to study and pursue advanced educations
and who refused to limit their future based on gender, and both had dreams
for their future. They were both bright and basically typical young girls
developing their separate approaches to the problems in
America
. Their primary difference was in their political approach to those
problems, while Hillary Rodham was a conservative Republican, Condoleezza
"Condi" Rice was a traditional Southern Democrat.

The
unusual name that Reverend John Wesley Rice, Jr. and his wife Angela gave
their daughter when she was born in
Birmingham
on
November 14, 1954
, is derived from an Italian musical expression; Con
dolcezza meaning "with sweetness." An only child, she grew
up with the undivided love and attention of her parents to exude the
meaning of her name in both word and deed. Her roots in the South ran
deep, her paternal great-grandmother was born the child of a slave and her
paternal great-grandfather was himself a slave. One of their sons, John
Rice, Jr., sought to build a new life beyond the family farm through
education.

"One
day he decided he was going to get book learning," Condi has said in
various presentations, so he asked in the parlance of the day how a
colored man might get to college. And they told him about 50 miles down
the road there was this little Presbyterian college called Stillman
college and if he would go there he could get a college education. So he
saved up his cotton and he took off for
Tuscaloosa
and he finished his first year of college. They said, 'Now how are you
going to pay for your second year?' He said, 'Well, I'm out of cotton.'
They aid, 'You're out of luck, you'll have to leave Stillman.' " John
Rice learned however, that some of his classmates were getting their
education paid for through scholarships, based upon their promise to study
to become Presbyterian ministers. Rice continues, "And my grandfather
said, 'Well, you know, that's just what I had in mind.' And my family has
been Presbyterian and college-educated ever since."[i]

Condoleezza's
grandfather pastored in
Louisiana
and then was sent to
Birmingham
,
Alabama
, to oversee a Presbyterian mission. Reverend Rice, drawing on his own
experience, became a driving force in encouraging poor young men and women
in his Black congregation to concentrate on getting a good education and
pursue a college diploma. Among them was his own son, Condi's father, who
followed his father's footsteps into ministry and inspiring and
encouraging
Birmingham
youth. She says of her father, "He really was a person who believed
that even if
Birmingham
was, at the time, a place of limited horizons for black children, it
should still be a place of unlimited dreams."[ii]

A
college education was equally important to the family of Condi's mother
Angela, whose father (Condi's Grandfather) Albert Ray determined that his
own five children would never have to work as he did in his own teen years
in the mines. Holding down three jobs in
Birmingham
he put all of his children through college; Angela earning a teaching
degree. She was teaching music and science at
Fairfield
High School
in a suburb of
Birmingham
when she met John Rice. Reverend Rice also taught at
Fairfield
to supplement his ministerial salary, and coached the school's basketball
and football teams. The two married in 1954 and by the end of the year
welcomed a daughter to their young family.

Condi
was born on a Sunday morning, even as her father was presiding over his
congregation at church. In her infancy the pastor and his family actually
lived in a small residence within the church building itself, and later
moved to a parsonage a few blocks away. Thus Condi's life and livelihood
was constantly tied directly to the church, her father's ministry, and her
own faith. All would figure prominently in her thinking throughout life.
As the only child of two educators, learning was also a primary focus.
Condi learned to read by age five but, because she was too young to enter
school Angela took a one-year leave from her traditional classroom to
home-school her daughter. When she at last began public school she was
well ahead of her classmates and would excel academically throughout her
life. To broaden their daughter's experiences the Rice's enrolled her in
various schools in the early years to expose her to different people,
different societies, and divergent views of life in
Birmingham
.

The
parsonage in which Condi spent her formative years was in the middle-class
Black neighborhood of
Titusville
. As such it was sheltered from some of the problems that plagued poorer
Black neighborhoods in the 1960s. Even so, it was impossible to avoid
contact with the prejudices that plagued the South. She recalls, "I
grew up in
Birmingham
,
Alabama
, before the Civil Rights movement -- a place that was once described,
with no exaggeration, as the most thoroughly segregated city in the
country. I know what it means to hold dreams and aspirations when half
your neighbors think you are incapable of, or uninterested in, anything
better. I know what it's like to live with segregation in an atmosphere of
hostility, and contempt, and cold stares, and the ever-present threat of
violence, a threat that sometimes erupted into the real thing."[iii]

Reverend
and Mrs. Rice did their best to shelter their young daughter from the
inequities that existed outside the
Fairfield
suburb, but knew they could not shield her from the knowledge of what was
happening elsewhere. At the same time they taught their daughter never to
bow to racial prejudice when it reared its ugly head. On an outing with
her mother to a downtown department one day, Condi picked out a dress she
wanted to try on and mother and daughter walked towards a dressing room.
The white salesperson took the dress out of young Condi's hand, pointed to
the sign that read "Whites Only," and directed them to a distant
dressing room reserved for Black customers. Angela Rice, a dignified and
well-dressed professional woman, refused and advised the clerk that if she
wanted their business, her daughter would try on the dress in a real
dressing room. Economics won over prejudice and Condi recalled, "I
remember the woman standing there guarding the door, worried to death she
was going to lose her job."[iv]

It
was just such prejudice that ten years earlier prompted Reverend Rice
himself to reject his traditional Democratic roots. It was hard NOT to be
socially liberal in the face of poverty and repression in the South. In
1952 however, Reverend Rice met bigotry at its most blatant when he tried
to vote in the Presidential election. Dixiecrats, segregationist Southern
Democrats, in efforts to repress both the poor and the Black vote
instituted poll taxes and other measures to control political power. Under
the guise of protecting the ballot from the uneducated, literacy and
education tests became a common ploy. When Reverend Rice tried to vote in
Birmingham
that year a poll worker pointed to a jar of beans and advised that if he
could guess the number of beans contained therein, he would be deemed
smart enough to vote. After learning from members of his Congregation that
Republican poll workers did not engage in such tactics, he registered with
that party. As a minister and a man dedicated to improving the lives of
youth in his community he remained something of a social liberal, but was
after 1952 a life-time Republican. Not until 1982 did his daughter change
from Democrat to Republican.

Condi
was only eight years old in 1963 when
Birmingham
erupted into demonstrations and riots. Church leaders rallying around Dr.
Martin Luther King frequently involved young Blacks in their efforts to
draw attention to what was happening in the South.
Birmingham
police responded with fire hoses, vicious dogs, and violence. White
supremacists and segregationists responded with attacks, shootings, and
hidden bombs. While Reverend Rice supported the Civil Rights movement, he
objected to putting any children in harm's way for the cause. Danger
however, could not be avoided. On Sunday, September 15, the pastor of the
16th Street
Baptist Church had just finished preaching a sermon titled "The Love
That Forgives" when a bomb exploded in the basement killing four
young girls and wounding 22 other youth.

"I
did not see it happen," Condoleezza says, "but I heard it happen
and I felt it happen, just a few blocks away at my father's church. It is
a sound that I will never forget, that will forever reverberate in my
ears. That bomb took the lives of four young girls, including my friend
and playmate Denise McNair. The crime was calculated, not random. It was
meant to suck the hope out of young lives, bury their aspirations, and
ensure that old fears would be propelled forward into the next
generation."[v]

Churches
were not the only targets of bombers and violent hate-mongers during that
tragic summer of 1963. The homes of prominent Black leaders were bombed,
other homes were indiscriminately shot up, and burning crosses of the Ku
Klux Klan blazed in the night sky fro the lawns of Black families.
Condoleezza recalls vividly how during that turbulent time, her father sat
up late at night cradling a rifle to protect the family home from outside
threats. Those personal experiences framed her current strong support for
the right to bear arms. In a May 11, 2002, interview with CNN's Larry King
she said, " My father and his friends defended our community in 1962
and 1963 against white nightriders by going to the head of the community,
the head of the cul-de-sac, and sitting there armed. And so I'm very
concerned about any abridgement of the Second Amendment. I'll tell you
that I know that if Bull Connor had had lists of registered weapons, I
don't think my father and his friends would have been sitting at the head
of the community defending the community."

In
1965 the family moved to Tuscalloosa where Reverend Rice took the position
as dean of students at
Stillman
College
. During summers he attended graduate courses at the
University
of
Denver
and, after receiving a Master of Arts degree in education, the family
moved to
Colorado
in 1967. There at the university where he received his degree he worked
first as assistant director of admissions, then taught classes, and
eventually after 13 years became vice chancellor of university resources.
Condoleezza attended St. Mary's Academy, a private all-girls Catholic high
school in the upscale neighborhood of Cherry Hills. Those years marked her
first educational experience while attending an integrated school.

When
Condoleezza finished all requirements for graduation by the beginning of
her senior year, her parents tried to persuade her to enroll at the
University
of
Denver
. Condi wanted to remain with her class to graduate with a high school
diploma and describes the disagreement as her one moment of rebellion
against the wishes of her parents. Ultimately she did both, attending
classes at the university in the morning and returning to Cherry Hills in
the afternoon for her high school classes, graduating from St. Mary's at
age sixteen.

Condoleezza
had always been interested in piano and began playing at age three.
Through her youth and into her teen years it was her primary passion and
her early dreams were of becoming a concert pianist. Slowly she realized
that while she did have a talent for the keyboard, it did not rise to the
level of a life-time career. At D.U. where her father taught classes in
American history and Black History she took an interest in politics. The
burning issue of the day was the war in
Vietnam
, a conflict her father spoke in opposition to. In an interview with Bill
Sammon in 2004 she spoke of her own feelings about the Vietnam War.
"For people of that generation," she said, "it became the
lodestar for the questioning of authority. And authority was never to be
trusted again. And so whenever people say '
Vietnam
,' what they mean is 'Authority is not to be trusted."[vi]

Condoleezza's
political interests were seated in foreign policy in general and, with the
Cold War still a subject of concern and her favorite professor Dr. Josef
Korbel (the father of Madeleine Albright) teaching Soviet studies, she
applied herself to learning all she could about
America
's distant enemies. In 1974 at age nineteen she received her Bachelors
Degree in Political Science and the following year received her masters
from the University of Notre Dame. In 1977 she began working as an intern
in the Carter Administration's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs
and in 1981, at the age of 26, received her Ph.D. in Political Science
from the Graduate School of International Studies at
Denver
.

In
1982 Dr. Rice, now one of the most astute academics on issues of foreign
policy, could no longer agree with the activities of President Carter's
administration. Biographer Antonia Felix told The
Washington Post, "Rice was very focused on foreign policy, as
that is her area of expertise, and although she had voted for Carter she
was very disappointed in how he handled the
Soviet Union
's invasion of
Afghanistan
. She thought the administration was very weak in its attitude about the
Soviet Union
's capabilities as well as in its response, so she switched parties."[vii]

Dr.
Rice later described her conversion noting, "The first Republican I
knew was my father, and he is still the Republican I most admire,"
Rice has said. "He joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow
Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did. My
father has never forgotten that day, and neither have I."[viii]

In
1981 Dr. Rice went to work as an Assistant Professor in Political Science
at
Stanford
University
where she was granted tenure in 1987 and promoted to Provost six years
later. She was the first woman, the first minority, and the youngest
Provost at the University.

In
1984 Brent Scowcroft spoke to a faculty dinner at Stanford about
"arms control" and met Dr. Rice, who impressed him with her
knowledge and insight into the Eastern bloc. In 1989 when President George
H. W. Bush appointed Scowcroft to be National Security Advisor he
remembered the bright young academic and hired her to be his expert on
Soviet issues. Two years later the Berlin Wall had fallen and
Germany
was reunited. The Soviet bloc was broken and the Cold War was officially
over. Dr. Rice returned to Stanford in 1991 to continue her teaching
career but took a leave of absence during the Presidential Election of
Campaign in 2000 to become Republican candidate George W. Bush's foreign
policy advisor.

Following
George Bush's election, on
December 17, 2000
, Dr. Rice became the president-elect's choice to become National Security
Advisor. She was the first woman ever confirmed to that post and earned
the nickname "Warrior Princess" for her strong determination
that was mixed with a mild and insightful manner.

On
November 16, 2004, following the resignation of General Colin Powell, Dr.
Rice was nominated to become "Secretary Rice," the first woman
appointed as U.S. Secretary of State in history and the second Black
American to hold that post. She was confirmed two months later by a Senate
vote of 85 - 13.

Like
the girl who grew up so much like herself, Hillary Clinton, (today perhaps
considered Secretary Rice's own antithesis), Secretary Rice remains a
controversial figure who is both loved and rejected--perhaps like Senator
Clinton because she too is difficult to quantify. Jay Nordinger wrote for National
Review seven years before Secretary Rice ascended to the post that has
now made her one of the most successful women of our generation:
"Rice characterizes herself as an 'all-over-the-map Republican,'
whose views are 'hard to typecast': 'very conservative' in foreign policy,
'ultra-conservative' in other areas, 'almost shockingly libertarian' on
some issues, 'moderate' on others, 'liberal" on probably nothing.'
(She calls herself 'mildly pro-choice' on abortion.)"[ix]

Senator
Clinton and Secretary Rice, despite their differences, remain vivid
examples of the changing politics of our time, not only in terms of
activism and dissent, but perhaps more importantly in their individual
willingness to not only ask hard questions but to change their minds based
upon what they have observed and learned. In a very special way, ours is a
generation that learned to become pliable and reject any action, simply
because "this is the way it has always been done."

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
The authors extend our thanks to the following who granted personal
interviews for this work: Roger Donlon (MOH), Robin Moore,
Don Bendell, Jimmy Stanford, Vince Yrineo, Sammy L. Davis (MOH),
Linda Alvarado, Karen Offutt, Lieutenant General Carol Mutter, Sir
Edward Artis, General Colin L. Powell, Katharine Houghton, Adrian
Cronauer, Jan Scruggs, Delbert Schmeling, and Peter Lemon (MOH).Our thanks to the staff of the following who either wrote or
allowed reprint of their own works for this book: Dr.
Marguerite Guzman Bouvard, Don Bendell, Congressman Sam Farr,
Congressman Thomas Petri, Congressman Mike Honda, Congressman Jim
Walsh, Governor Jim Doyle, and Scott Baron.Our special thanks also to the staff of the following who provided
information and fact-checked the chapters related to their
subject: Staff of Senator John Kerry, Staff of (then) Senator
Hillary Clinton, Staff of Senator Jim Webb
A SPECIAL THANKS also to Dr. Marguerite Guzman Bouvard for his
assistance in writing and editing the entire section on the Role of
the Sexes.